I found it hard, it was hard to find - oh well, whatever.

Continuing my trip up Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time...

...with an album I think I like, but I also have a nagging doubt I might be wrong.

#6: Nevermind - Nirvana (1991) 

An overnight-success story of the 1990s, Nirvana’s second album and its totemic first single, “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” shot up from the Northwest underground — the nascent grunge scene in Seattle — to kick Michael Jackson’s Dangerous off the top of the Billboard charts and blow hair metal off the map. Few albums have had such an overpowering impact on a generation — a nation of teens suddenly turned punk — and such a catastrophic effect on its main creator. The weight of success led already-troubled singer-guitarist Kurt Cobain to take his own life in 1994.

But his slashing riffs, corrosive singing, and deviously oblique writing — rammed home by the Zeppelin-via-Pixies might of bassist Krist Novoselic and drummer Dave Grohl — put warrior purity back in rock & roll. Lyrically, Cobain raged in code — shorthand grenades of inner tumult and self-loathing. His genius, though, in songs like “Lithium,” “Breed,” and “Teen Spirit” was the soft-loud tension he created between verse and chorus, restraint and assault. Cobain was a pop lover at heart — and a Beatlemaniac: Nevermind co-producer Butch Vig remembered hearing Cobain play John Lennon’s “Julia” at sessions. Cobain also fought to maintain his underground honor with songs like the scabrous punk purge “Territorial Pissings.”

Obviously, I love Nevermind - because everyone loves Nevermind, don't they?.  But - do I ever really listen beyond the first four or five tracks?  And if I don't, is this because (whisper it softly) it's not really all that great an album in its entirety?  Only one way to find out...

1. "Smells Like Teen Spirit"
OK - so it's fine so far, I guess.  This is an absolute genius of a track - and a great opener.
2. "In Bloom"
And another great track - all good so far.
3. "Come As You Are"
Well, this is certainly a strong opening selection to an album, isn't it?
4. "Breed"
Maybe a slight dip in quality, but only from a very high baseline.
5. "Lithium"
And this is back up there with the best of them - certainly one of my favourite tracks on the album.
6. "Polly"
And I remember this is where I start to lose interest - I mean, it's a "fine" track but definitely not as the same level of the previous ones.  I'm sure there's some clever subtext, but it just feels a bit lightweight to me (although if you read into it, the subject matter is anything but lightweight)
7. "Territorial Pissings"
This has a very odd start but it's better than I remember - reminiscent of early Green Day.
8. "Drain You"
Yeah, we're still running at a pretty high quality level here - although I would say we're the point that if I was played this in isolation and asked which Nirvana track it was, I'm be coming up blank.

9. "Lounge Act"
No problems with this either, but again I wouldn't recognise it from any of the others.

10. "Stay Away"
Possibly a little too similar to the previous track for me, but I've no complaints about it in isolation.
11. "On A Plain"
Yeah, I like this one - and it has enough to distinguish itself from the pack.
12. "Something In The Way"
And the same comment applies here.
13. "Endless, Nameless"
Ah - a secret hidden track available after a 10 minute silence on the CD,  I'm not sure I ever listened to it before - and I'm not sure I'll ever listen to it again.  In my experience, some things are best stayed hidden.

So, I think we can safely say that whilst the album starts particularly strongly, the quality of the tracks certainly doesn't fall off a cliff - there's an argument that some of them are possibly a bit similar, but "this great track sounds a bit too much like this other great track" isn't really an argument I want to be attempting.  And the best tracks - "Smells Like Teen Spirit", "Come As You Are", "Lithium" - are really top notch tracks indeed with good tunes, well played and interesting lyrics.

So, what was the source of my concerns around this album?  My suspicion is that it's somewhat unrelenting in its attack and I'm just not an angry enough person to keep up that level of angst for the length of the album (and I'm not complaining about the length - t's a perfectly reasonable 50 minutes).  So whilst the fact that they manage to maintain the level is impressive (and a contributory factor to its greatness in many people's eyes), I just find the whole album a bit too much.  Yeah, I know I'm just a snowflake - but I'll just stick with the first 4 or 5 tracks, fast forward to tracks 11 and 12 and then remember to turn it off before the 10 minute silence has completed and I have to suffer track 13.  I'm happy to accept it's a great album though - it's got a good quality bar throughout and obviously had a huge cultural and musical impact (you still see people wearing Nirvana teeshirts, after all - 30 YEARS LATER (how can this possibly be the case?!?).  However, whilst accepting its greatness I can also quite understand that a lot of people will absolutely hate it - it's certainly one of the more challenging entries in the top 10.

I wonder if Wikipedia has anything to say about the album?!?  Not as much as you might expect actually - it's not short, but not huge either.  And it certainly starts in an "interesting" fashion - "Cobain intended for the album to sound like a fusion of mainstream pop bands such as the Knack and the Bay City Rollers with heavier rock bands such as Black Flag and Black Sabbath".  Was that really what he had in mind?  I know I've been rude about Kurt in the past (I'm only joking, man!) but you have to admit the guy had class - the record label were worried about the baby on the front cover being in possession of a penis and pushed for an alternative but "Cobain said the only compromise he would accept would be a sticker covering the penis reading: "If you're offended by this, you must be a closet pedophile.""

The album wasn't expected to sell all that well, so an initial pressing of 50,000 copies were sent out in the US and 35,000 in the UK (because Bleach, their previous album, had done OK over here) and various marketing strategies were devised to hopefully get sales up to 250,000 or so.  As it turned out, all they needed to do was release "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and then spend all their time pressing and distributing more copies - which then flew off the shelves.  All in all, it's sold somewhere in the region of 15 million copies globally - so most people were pretty happy about that, even if the band all played it all very cool indeed.  There's no doubt of the album's legacy - I can accept the argument that there were other bands doing stuff very similar and were just unlucky or didn't have Kurt's charisma, but history isn't written by the losers now, is it?  One final amusing comment - "Nevermind is credited for ending the dominance of hair metal" - I think we were all happy when that happened, eh?

Wikipedia also reminds me of something I promised I'd keep you updated on way back with OK Computer - which 6 Music voted it the 6th most overrated album of all time and I said we still had 3 more to come.  Well - guess which album comes top?  Apparently no less an expert than Gregg Spellman from Northamptonshire declared Nevermind to be "One great single maybe but the rest is irritating second rate rock with mindless whining that had, has been, and is being written everywhere by admittedly less pretty and tragic characters".  That told them, eh?  I forgot to tell you that Sgt Pepper came in 7th on the list and we have one more still to meet on the list, which I'm probably going to forget all about so you'll just never know...

The Wikipedia entry for the group is amusingly shorter than the entry for two of its members - can you possibly guess which one of the group doesn't warrant quite such a lengthy entry?  Having said that, Chad Channing, their initial drummer warrants little more than "was originally in Nirvana but left due to "creative differences" (and not being able to play the drums)" (although he does actually appear on Nevermind, playing the drums on "Polly").  Wikipedia doesn't actually have a lot to say about the band apart from Nevermind and Kurt's death - one of which we've covered and the other of which we won't.  He was a troubled fellow and no mistake but he made a lot of people very happy and his music still does.

"Customers also listened to" Blur, Beck, Lenny Kravitz and The Verve - which feels like an odd mix to me.  I was pleased to listen to this album in full for a change, even if I found it all a bit too much for my delicate ears.  I'm happy enough with its place in the top 10 - I realise others will not be so happy but if there's one thing this exercise has taught me it's that you can't please all of the people all of the time.  One thing is certain though - I'll take Nevermind over In Utero (or Bleach) any day of the week.

And somewhat unexpectedly, this is the last album on the list that I can claim to know well - of the remaining albums, three will be a first time listen and the other two I have listened to a couple of times and have formed opinions of them that mean I haven't bothered revisiting them.  And no, this doesn't necessarily mean I think they're bad (but I'm currently of the opinion that one of them definitely falls into the "not great" category).  

#7 - Someone we've not seen before

#5 - Our last visit with The Fab Four